


Left Behind

by thecat_13145



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-16
Updated: 2012-09-16
Packaged: 2017-11-14 09:05:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/513574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecat_13145/pseuds/thecat_13145
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Men always leave. Her father taught her that. She's just waiting for it to happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Just inspired by noticing that both Charlie and Don seem to have abandonment issues. As I can't see any evidence of them in Alan, I concluded that they must have come from Margaret. My brain made up the rest, I don't own any of them.

Her father leaves in the winter, when the snowdrifts in Korea are bigger than Margret’s head. 

He tells her that he loves her and to be good for her mummy and that he’ll be back before the peaches fall.

Its three months later that her mummy tells her he won’t be coming back.

“Good riddance.” Grandma says, stroking her mother’s head.

“That’s what men do.” Says Irene, superiorly. “They leave.”

Margret thinks that’s a bit unfair, as daddy didn’t ask to go.

She’s 16 when she learns he wasn’t dead, just got on a plane back to his wife and three other daughters in Maine.

/**/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/

Alan loves her.

She knows that. He says it often enough and she’s certain he believes it.

He certainly doesn’t run a mile when she tells him about her father.

“He’s a schump.” He whispers, running his fingers through her hair. “Let me be your family.”

She wants to believe him, especially when he holds her hand while they watch for those two faint blue lines and he whispers that he’ll support her whatever she decides.

She thinks about an abortion, but finds she can’t go through with it. She tries doing it on her own, but the stares and whispers, when people catch sight of her empty left hand, are too much for her.

Finally, she lets Alan slide his grandmother’s ring on her finger. It’s too big, but she likes that. Because when he leaves, she can take it off.

/**/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/

Alan abandons any plans of working through lunch, after a third neighbour calls to complain about the baby’s crying.

He drives home to the Craftsmen house they can ill afford and nearly breaks the door down when he can’t find his keys, because Donny sounds like he’s being murdered.

He isn’t, but he’s lying in his cot in the living room, wet, hot and almost certainly hungry, screaming himself red in the face.

“Margret.” He walks through to the kitchen, his mind going over the absolute worst case scenarios he can think of for why his wife would leave their son in such distress.

Margret is sitting on the grass, just staring into space.

“Margret.” He knelt down beside her, a still crying Donny on his shoulder. She looked at him, her eyes unfocused. 

“Here would be a good place for a pond, don’t you think?”

He blinks. “Margret, What the…?”

She glances at him and at Donny.

“Men always leave.”

At that moment, if Major Frank Marion Burns had being standing in front of him, Alan could have strangled him with his bare hands, non violence be dammed. But he doesn’t even know if the bastard gave Margret’s mother his true name, and at this moment, he has a son and a wife who need him.

Cuddling Donny against him, he heads back into the house.

This is his fault. He should have insisted they waited, until Margret was more secure, until she trusted him. But after what happened…she was so desperate for a baby.

They’ll wait for the next one, he promises his son, carrying Don back into the house.

“It’s O.K. Donny.” He mutters, feeling like he wants to start crying himself. “Mummy just isn’t feeling very well today.”

His son looks at him with big trusting eyes, and it’s all he can do to keep his eyes clear enough to do up the diaper.

/**//**/*/*/*/*/

With Charlie, he calls home every lunchtime, and sometimes more often. He always asks to speak to Donny, then Margret and then Charlie in order.

A part of him threats over how often it’s Donny that picks up the phone, but he tell himself that Donny’s just at that age and he always sounds happy.

He doesn’t know if it’s that Margret is finally starting to believe that he won’t leave her, or if it’s that Charlie takes more after his side of the family, unlike Donny who is a near split of Irene (and presumable the absent Major Burns), but things are calming down.

At least until the day Margret calls him at work to tell him that their three year old is multiplying 3 digit numbers in his head.

*/*/*/*/*/*/*//**/*/

She is certain Princeton is what will cause it.

After all, what man would accept his wife going off to college on the other side of the country, even with their barely teenage son?

No matter how much they say it’s the only logical choice that Charlie is too young to go to college on his own, the truth is there can be no way Alan can be happy about the separation.

She’s just waiting for him to say something.

Don is too. 

Her eldest can read people, in the same way Charlie can multiply numbers, and he keeps glancing from Alan to her and picking at his dinner.

Charlie is just happy to be home, and is almost completely obvious to the tension. She seen him glance at Don, as though trying to figure out if Don’s mad at him for something. She tries to smile at Don to reassure him, but if anything her eldest looks more tense.

It’s too much.

“I’ll clear the table shall I?”

“Margret.” He reaches out, grabbing her hand. She wants him to yell, to say he isn’t going to let her go, to fight for her.

But Alan has a fear of conflict nearly as strong of her fear of abandonment. He told her once when they were dating about his home, where his parents’ voices were always raised. He’ll stand his ground, argue with you, but he’ll never raise his voice, can’t see that there are times when you have to.

She wants him to follow her into the kitchen, to fight for her, to say that there’s no way he’s letting her go.

Even though she knows he never will

//*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*

For some reason, neither of them ever thought of her leaving him.

It didn’t make sense.

Alan’s father had died when he was 60; his grandfather hadn’t even made it that far.

The idea that Margret would die before him had always seemed laughable.

Then they found out about the cancer.

At first he can’t believe it. After everything they’ve being through, all the reassurance he’s given her, she’s going to leave him.

Charlie retreats in the garage and Don comes back.

It hurts him to see the pain in his oldest eyes, the realisation that he isn’t the one their mother wants around. He thinks about telling Don about his grandfather, about why his mother doesn’t mind about Charlie, after all he’s just confirming what she’s said all along.

He does try to talk to Don, to ask him questions about his team, his fiancé, but Don has apparently inherited more than just a sense of justice (or possibly more accurately injustice) from Margret. He’s also inherited her ability to refuse to talk about stuff.

The third time he finds himself frozen with a “You never gave a crap about this stuff before so you have no right to be pretending to be interested now” stare, he retreats to the garage.

Charlie is standing in front of the board, the same blank eyed stare in his eyes that he remembers so well from the day they talked about the carp pond.

And it hits him. 

He could never leave Margret, anymore than she could leave him. He has pieces of her in his sons, pieces he has to cling on to.

He only realises he’s crying when he feel’s Charlie’s hand distractedly patting him on the back.

He forces himself to smile at his son, who is hardly aware of him.

“It’s O.K. Charlie.” He mutters. “Dad’s just isn’t feeling very well today.”


End file.
